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watching&reading&studying

This will be short.

I was too busy this week, next week looks easy neither, so I apologise and recommend watching&studying&discussing the social good at social enterprises.

I guess you still can find some videos at Mashable's livestream archives here.

You can search social enterprises at DeepDyve that is a professional service, in this case not cheap as well. Only for committed people. You can study here from a wide selection of 32 million articles. Lots of articles in the topic social enterprise as well.

Finally, the best way to discuss what you read about is Guardian Social Enterprise Group at Linkedin. Feel free to join. If you haven't joined Linkedin yet, it is the best time to do it. Linkedin has a free version, so you don't need to worry about your money, you can upgrade later any time.

SocialGood making easy

I would like to review 3 Mashable-SocialGoodSummit videos I have been watching recently. I am still wondering why I still cannot come up with a good business idea... Maybe I am not so creative. This is possible really. Maybe that is not even my task. What about social media?

I have heard in one of the videos that Bill Gates told us social media was not for social good today. If I say it, I cannot sleep two nights :), but his name is Bill Gates. Maybe he is right. I do not know. Social media is just a platform. I could say funnily:

we need more naive and diligent people that are able to engage other people to participate and organise social media in a way supporting social good effectively. I think there are so many developers that they should recruit testers to make more and more people tech-savy in an adequate manner. Just prevent overstatement.

Watching the two persons from Zimbabwe was glamorous. They were so enthusiastic, and optimistic about the future. They told us about a project where furniture was built from billboard. To be honest I could not imagine that, but they showed a photo about a chair that was made by the above mentioned method.

What really made me enthusiastic was the #zerohungerchallange project. They have not only great social impact but great success as well. Everyone who feels empathy should support and donate them.

The Social Good Summit Part1

The Social Good Summit ended 5 days ago, but with the association of livestream.com and Mashable there are 93 videos available here: http://new.livestream.com/Mashable/sgs2013
I am just at the beginning of watching the videos but I am already inspired and motivated by what I heard. I have just watched two videos out of the 93, but I plan to continue. Already at the beginning the speaker announced a Coursera course with the title How to Change the World. You can check it out here. I have already signed up. This course examines issues concerning poverty, the environment, technology, health care, gender, education and activism to better understand and change the world.
The sessions are 6 weeks long and starting at January 20, 2014. 
So far for now.
And now, back to the videos!

The Solution Economy and The Social Good Summit #2030NOW

(The blog does not move anywhere, it remains on blogger.)

http://dowser.org/a-quick-guide-to-changing-the-world-seriously/

The six strategies how we can accelerate the solution economy:

1. Change the lens and see the untapped opportunities in life. The oft-neglected poor can become new, viable customers.
2. Problem solvers target the gaps: They look for markets where traditional companies and governments have never been.
3. Consider outside resources to achive end goals.
4. Sometimes the cheapest solutions are the best. Think about ridesharing: 15% improving in ridesharing would save $21billion annually.
5. Consider you purchase as a vote. Yes, a vote for social impact. The public sector can change the line first of all, so I advice you to purchase as you would vote and then we can have impact on governments and large companies to contribute.
6. Measuring what matters is also important. Impact Reporting and Investment Standards can aggregate and compare data.

http://dowser.org/a-quick-guide-to-changing-the-world-seriously/

This is adapted from their new book The Solution Revolution which you can buy at Amazon.

(Yes, this is an affiliate link)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2013/09/20/the-power-of-innovation-and-technology-to-change-the-world-an-inside-look-at-the-2013-social-good-summit/

The Social Good Summit took place in New York City. I don't know the outcome yet, but I really like their question „How can technology and new media create solutions for the biggest problems facing my community and create a better future by the year 2030?”

The Social Good Summit was held from 22-24 September, and there are tons of information on the internet about it, especially on Mashable.

http://mashable.com/2013/09/24/causes-supporter-network/

Social Good apps

http://mashable.com/2013/09/20/social-good-apps/

Ok, The Social Good Summit is not about apps... Really.

Ericsson's Chef Grunewald tells us that the aim of The Social Good Summit is to enable all to participate in a global conversation.

Kate James (Gates Foundation) says that the event provides a unique opportunity to openly discuss solutions to our biggest development challanges.

Henry Timms' (92Y) goal was to open up the conversation and engage with a new community of thinkers, leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators.

Mr. Kaag (UNDP) said: This year we are hosting events in over 60 countries, including meet-ups, discussing a single topic: what needs to be done now in order to have a better world in 2030 – hence the hashtag #2030NOW.

Read on! It is interesting:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2013/09/20/the-power-of-innovation-and-technology-to-change-the-world-an-inside-look-at-the-2013-social-good-summit/

Even more people want to start a social enterprise

While searching the Internet I have found an interesting blog entry about the necessity of preferential treatment of social enterprises. I think this kind of treatment is a must if the social impact is large-scale.  Both the hunger of millions in developing countries and the different forms of disabilities in the developed countries are necessary to be solved.

In my opinion subsidies supporting social entrepreneurs are necessary as well, but I do not think of financial help at first. Social enterprises should be provided with knowledge or know-how first of all. You have to teach the poor the livestock breeding instead of giving them few chickens.

However, I agree with supporting social enterprises with subsidies, but just in case if this enterprise is promising: it has appropriate social impact or it is a promising start-up.  The writer of the blog entry would maybe disagree:

Social enterprises and preferential treatment here by Rolfe Larson Read on!

You can find another interesting topic in theguardian online. The headline is really eye-catching: lots of people want to start a social enterprise. It shows exact statistics that tell us that 7% of the whole population of UK wants to start a social enterprise. Among young people the numbers double up: 15 percent of the young people plan to start a social enterprise.

Social enterprise sounds popular, doesn’t it? If so, I got lucky, I will have stuff to write about… J

Unfortunately, intention and planning do not meet improvement and fulfilment. Only 1% starts a social enterprise, the other people remain opportunity seeker and do not become an entrepreneur.

I am interesting which factors holds them back. Are they financial or technical? Are they motivational or inspirational? What do they lack of who give up before starting?

Social enterprise facts are here by David Floyd. Read on!

Social enterprises today

This blog entry will be a bit extraordinary. Though this blog is a news blog, I would like to write an introduction about what social enterprises are all about. I try to summarise it by my own words even if I keep reading the resources on the Internet and the books about social entrepreneurship.

 In my opinion, while speaking about social enterprises we must emphasise two main factors: the people and the impact. Social enterprises have social impact, so they face the challenges of the world and offer a solution to the issues. However, they are real enterprises which mean they work as usual enterprises in some ways. Their business is functioning similar to normal enterprises. The difference is that the success of social enterprises is measured in a different way.

Social enterprise solutions represent a wide variety of solutions on social impact. I think almost everyone have heard about microfinancing. The name behind microfinancing is Muhammad Younus. He is a Nobel Prize winner, founder of Grameen Bank that lends small amount of money to the poor. He has achieved enormous success starting with not more than $27. It is quiet unbelievable, isn’t it?

The forms of social impact can be microfinancing, helping poor people build their existence (not in form of donations, only giving them the opportunity to work or produce food, for example, or even start an enterprise. Other forms of social impact involve improvements and innovations of education and health. Don’t forget that 3 billion people of the world are living their life in poverty, most of them in hunger. Also many millions of men and women are illiterate, and also many suffer from hard diseases. Therefore the education and the supply with clean water give inevitable challenge to charitable social enterprises to solve the issues.

Innovation is as important as the above mentioned activities. I should tell you that in my opinion the innovation is not a crucial and inevitable part of social enterprises. However, I must admit that in the new age of Internet and technology, the number of innovative solutions at the field of social enterprises increased significantly. I know others have different opinion: they say that innovation is one of the most important parts of the social enterprises. I think the fight against poverty, starvation and diseases is more important.

This summary is only a short introduction of what is the topic of social enterprises all about. If you are interested and need more information please follow and read my blog, I will publish many resources from the web, so you can read and implement much information.

Note that this blog will be a news blog, so you will find bunch of information right here. Feel free to share and comment if you have an idea to tell me, follow me on Twitter or add me to a google+ circle.